On Thu, Feb 22, 2018 at 3:36 PM, tim Rowledge <tim at rowledge.org> wrote:

> At the latest board meeting we got to discussing the relative quietness of
> the squeak list(s) recently. We were wondering what you folks out there are
> doing with Squeak, what you'd like to be able to use it for, the things
> that you think would be important to improve it for wider use and so on.
>
> Please, whether you're a frequent user or an occasional look-at-the-list
> type, take a moment to let us know your opinions.
>
> What do you use Squeak for?


Thank your for asking!

I am a hobby programmer who uses Squeak to develop applications that
interest me.  I am currently enhancing my audio stream recording
application (using an external program) that I would like to run cross
platform. I actively work on Mac and Windows and dabble with Pi and
Android. I am researching requirements for an application to  to extract,
display, and manipulate geo data from USGS geopdf files. I am also thinking
about building a Pi app that I can use to detect Scorpions around my house.

If you don't use Squeak, why not?
> If you used Squeak in the past and don't now, what pulled you away?
>
> What does Squeak lack that you think might make you use it for 'regular'
> development?
>

I don't know that Squeak is lacking as much as I am and I don't think of
Squeak as a 'regular' development environment. Squeak is a gateway into a
different way of thinking about and doing development. When I see things
like Alice and her decendents, Nebraska, Caffeine, SqueakJS, or TiledMaps,
etc, it thrills me. Hey talented people can bootstrap Squeak to new chip
sets or spit out Slang for embedd applications (IOT anyone?)

If Squeak lacks anything, it is a mechanism to grow our base


> What things are too hard or annoying to do?
>

1. Writing a simple GUI application. The Squeak/Pharo landscape is littered
with many different GUI development experiments, none of which have
garnered global mind share (or sufficient documentation ;-), but this is
the nature of of our evolving environment. When I ask questions on the
list, I do get helpful answers. All GUI frameworks have limitations
2. Understanding the architecture of Morphic. I know I am not alone in this.
3. Understanding overloaded classes. E.g. StringValue seem to be heavily
biased towards ToolBuilder. It has lots of methods which look like they
belong in a package category, the ones with leading *,  not in the base
class categories, no*. If I am just interested in a simple StringValue
object what methods are essential. Or maybe I should only use ValueHolder
and do the heavy lifting in my classes.

What would you like to be able to use Squeak for?
>

Squeak seems quite capable of enabling me to reach my goals.


> tim
> --
> tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
> C for sinking, java for drinking, Smalltalk for thinking
>
>
>
> jrm
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/attachments/20180223/815a4bf0/attachment.html>